Sacral war in Israel: Covenantal synthesis of ancient Israelite and prophetic traditions

The fact that wars are pervasive throughout Israel's biblical history is not surprising since it is in harmony with the socio-political and economic milieu of the ancient Near East. Sacral wars are wars that Yahweh sanctions or wars in which he directly intervenes to defeat his enemies. Yahweh's involvement in Israel's wars may be somewhat surprising to a casual reader of the Old Testament, but students of ancient cultures have long established that such a phenomenon is not unique to biblical history. Gods of ancient Near Eastern nations were just as involved in the wars of their people. The problem that these texts raise for biblical theology lies in what appears to the modern day readers to be extreme and unnecessary violence. The total annihilation (i.e., h&dotbelow;ērem) of entire Canaanite communities in the conquest wars is a prime example.;This study seeks to understand the relationship of sacral war ideology to Old Testament theology, dealing with the text in its final canonical form and taking seriously both its historicity and chronology. It takes into account some insights of literary and tradition criticism in as much as they affect the exegesis and theology of the biblical text. It approaches the topic by isolating six different but related biblical motifs (Israel's election, deliverance from Egypt, the land promise, judgment, religious purity, and covenantal curses) that form the theological foundations of sacral war in ancient Israel. Then it traces all six motifs in the prophetic literature as they relate to Israel's historical and eschatological future.;The thesis of this study is twofold. First, irrespective of its outcome (victory or defeat) sacral war in Israers history is covenantal. Israel's covenantal relationship to Yahweh provided the occasion (election), limitation (land promise), and historical manifestation (exodus deliverance and conquest) of sacral war. Her participation in sacral war against the Canaanites (whether to exact judgment or to protect her religious purity) was out of covenantal obligation rather than ethnic discrimination. Second, even though sacral war survived in the prophetic visions of the future, it has undergone a significant inversion (a new exodus that will eclipse the first, inclusion of the nations, and universalization of Yahwistic theocracy to encompass the "whole earth"). The changes are related to the "new covenant" which will bring everlasting peace. The prophets, by entertaining the hope of abolishing death, added a seventh motif that opened the door to the concept of martyrdom.